FAQ

Frequently asked questions about the MPCDF DataShare service.

How can I share a link for collaboratively editing a document

While there is no option to share a “writeable” link to as single document,
you can instead create a dedicated folder for the document or project and share a link with “Download / View / Edit” for the folder. Collaborators will then be able to open and edit documents inside this folder in OnlyOffice via the “dot” menu.

Can you increase my quota?

Generally yes. Just open a ticket in our helpdesk shortly stating how much storage you need and what you intend to use it for.

Please note though that the DataShare service is not intended as a replacement for network shares or AFS, but rather for data you want to share with other people. You should store a few thousand files in it at most, beyond that you will experience performance issues during sync.

I deleted a file by mistake, what now?

Deleted files are kept in the ownCloud trashbin - from where you can restore them yourself - for up to 180 days. However, once the trashbin takes up more than 50% of your quota, old files will be deleted earlier to make sure there is enough space available for new data.

Your data is also backed up to tape daily. So even if a file was deleted from the trashbin it may be possible to recover it if it was stored in the DataShare for at least a day. In this case, you may open a ticket in our helpdesk, but please be aware since this takes manual invervention it may take a few days for your request to be processed.

I can’t upload big files

The maximum size of files that can be uploaded through the web interface or thirdparty WebDAV clients is 20 GB. Some clients may only support 2GB or less. Bigger files must be chunked into smaller parts on upload.

The ownCloud desktop clients support this by default and include an owncloudcmd interface for starting a sync from the command line.

For transferring individual big files by hand or in a script, there is a Python client pyocclient available.

I can’t open zip files downloaded through the web interface

In the web interface, you can select multiple files or directories at once and then download them as a ZIP archive. Some older ZIP programs can’t open these files. Note that this only applies to ZIP files generated on the fly by selecting multiple objects in the web interface, not objects that were already uploaded in ZIP format.

To work around this problem, either download each file separately or install a third-party unzip program such as 7 Zip (Windows, Linux) or The Unarchiver (Mac OS X).

I am an external user and can’t upload files

External accounts (you log in with you e-mail address) are meant for collaboration with MPCDF users only. As such, they dont’t have any quota of their own. Ask the person who invited you to share a folder with you and give you write permissions on it. You will then be able to upload data there which will be counted towards the quota of the inviter.

I get an error when trying to sync a folder in afs

Syncing folders with AFS is currently not supported and will most likely not work.

Accessing shared folders via webdav / CURL

You or your collaborators can upload files to a public link share via WebDAV using the address

https://datashare.mpcdf.mpg.de/public.php/webdav/

Where the user is the share token and password the share password (see screenshot).

Using this you can upload data with curl like so:

curl --user <token>:<password> https://datashare.mpcdf.mpg.de/public.php/webdav/ --upload-file </path/to/your/file>

Of coure, you can also use the WebDAV client of you choice.

How can I reset my password?

You can request a password reset here.

My app passwords in DataShare disappeared

There are some technical limitations on how the app passwords are stored in the user’s DataShare account. When a user’s password changes in the LDAP database, the app passwords defined before cannot be used any more and are therefore removed automatically by the system from the user’s account.
If this happens, please take care of re-defining your app passwords in the security section of your DataShare account.

Should I store Git Repositories in DataShare?

Definitely - no. Both DataShare and Git(Lab) are versioning systems, but they don’t know of each other. This can lead to confusing situations for one or the other system and in the worst case, you will lose data.